Occasionally, when reddit is running somewhat slowly and I get an orangered, clicking on the mail icon will eventually redirect me to the "reddit broke" page.

When I reload the page, it'll say I have no new messages (more specifically, it says "there doesn't seem to be anything here."). I'll have to go back into inbox to see the new messages. While this isn't the end of the world, of course, adding an extra page to load while reddit is already running slowly is somewhat tedious.

Not that I'm complaining, but I was certainly curious why this happens. I know other people who have had similar experiences.

I’ll go ahead and assume the billionth hit was to /r/jailbait, the #1 most heavily trafficked community among redditors according to all independent statistics. If not jailbait, then perhaps /r/nsfw or /r/gonewild, or perhaps yet another topic full of hateful racism or misogyny.

It’s a good thing the admins finally managed to hide the most popular subreddits from reddit’s listing on Google. Mustn’t advertise the truth about this place, after all.

It isn't that often that I get to do an analysis on a site of this size, although it's not the first time, so - for my own pleasure and yours - allow me:

These stats are looking very healthy! and even unusually healthy in a couple areas. As a loyal member I am comforted by these numbers.

First of all, Congrats on your one billion milestone! While 13 or 14 million active users each month is a very nice number, the real pride should come from your pages-per-visit number and the breakdown of 'time spent'. The averages are nice for board meetings but it is the details that tell the story.

Most sites have trouble getting visitors into the double digits for pages-per-visit, and 14-15 is well beyond that. I would be interested to see how that number has changed - or if it has changed - over the life of the site. It may slowly increase if the percentage of new visitors decreases ober time (more return visitors = more pages per visitor, generally speaking). Hopefully that has been the trend.

The breakdown for length-of-visit is the best part of this for me. You have a bounce rate in the 20's, which is great, and the percentage of visits that last for seconds is only slightly higher, and I suspect that is not a coincidence. Combined with the 17% new visitors it starts to tell a story... A good one.

Your "long visits" make up the majority of the traffic, which is what every community aims for. Considering that, you deserve props for not raping us with ads too. A billion pageviews is a lot of ad impressions, potentially.

I would need to see more statistical depth to comment on where your strengths and weaknesses are, and if this is somehow a negative trend (Which I doubt) then it would change the interpretation.

TL;DR - well done, Reddit! I hope we see the 2 Billion mark soon.

EDIT: To undo iPhone autocorrections. Although "paws-per-visit" might actually be measurable on this site...

Congratulations to the reddit admins and users! This website has an incredible and thriving community, and I hope it continues to be this way. As users, moderators, and administrators, we can all work together to keep this website a high-quality source of news.

Vote judiciously! Submit interesting articles! Reddit is what we make of it -- let's keep up the good work.